CNN buys out Beme, app shutting down January 31

Casey Neistat launched Beme as a video sharing platform intended to capture the moment. The app is being shut down in order to transform it into what will likely become a tool for eyewitness journalism.

Time Warner‘s CNN has bought out the app — sources to the Wall Street Journal claim the deal’s value rounds to $25 million. In a Medium post, CTO and Beme co-founder Matt Hackett admitted that the app has fallen off the map for whatever reason that it did.

Social media is supposed to connect across geographies and beliefs, to be the tool for building a less cruel and more creative world. It is this idealism for what technology can achieve that built Beme. Recent days have made it crushingly obvious that the social media we have built so far — at Beme or elsewhere — has not yet achieved this ideal.

With this acquisition and renewed focus, the Beme app (its content servers and social networking) will be shut down on January 31. Users can download every video and reaction they’ve made.

For now, Beme, as a company, will continue to operate in New York separate from CNN, even though some orders may come down from there. But the 11-member crew, soon to expand, is mostly independent in its operations.

“We will build with a wide mandate, combining Casey’s once-in-a-generation media prowess with our team’s killer product and engineering capabilities,” Hackett said.

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from Pocketnow http://pocketnow.com/2016/11/28/cnn-buys-out-beme-app-shutting-down-january-31